my adventures in the kitchen (with a bit of life in general thrown in)

First of all, please be patient with me as I get this blog set up in terms of layouts and formatting. I am trying to achieve a certain look and can’t quite find the right theme on WordPress. I am not 100% happy with the current one, but we’ll see where it goes. I am inspired by clean lines and no-fuss layouts like the ones that can be seen on smitten kitchen and swiss miss, both great blogs. I’m also trying hard to work on my food photography skills. Successful food photography requires an investment in both equipment [photography and cooking] and time. I have more of the latter than the former! One of the most challenging aspects is light. I am cooking from a small, galley kitchen with a north-facing window and it’s just not the best in terms of natural lighting. In general, if you’re interested, some tips/inspiration can be found here. So, stay tuned for hopefully an improved layout and new features!

Now onto some food…. ARTICHOKE DIP.
The inspiration for this comes from one of my favourite dips of all time — Artichoke and Asiago dip that I used to buy in Canada. This company sells a lot of pre-made dips, hummus, etc., and although they are not all the healthiest things around, they’re very delicious. So I wanted to try to recreate that. I hunted around for a good recipe, and couldn’t find one from my regular recipe sites. In the end, I used this one from food.com. Aside from my reservations about the amount of mayonnaise (next time I will put in less), this recipe turned out great! Easy to make and delicious (if you like artichokes that is!). I couldn’t find asiago cheese, so I did some research and subsituted the asiago for Pecorino Romano, an Italian sheep’s cheese. The substitution worked very well. Because this is a very salty cheese, I did not add the salt that’s included in the recipe.